There’s Good Sore and Bad Sore
I spent two years bouncing from one PT to the next trying to “fix” my IT Band issues, so I guess it’s normal that I’m hyper-sensitive to pain in my right knee. Actually, at this point, I think I’m just hyper-sensitive to the knee itself. It doesn’t actually hurt all the time. In fact, more often than not it doesn’t hurt. I just always know it’s there. I think my nervous system re-routed itself so there’s a direct connection between the knee and my brain. Either that, or two years of physical therapy makes you slightly crazy. The jury’s out.
I started out today’s run on a high from successfully completing 9 miles this Saturday (pain free!). I’m doing the Galloway Program, so Tuesdays and Thursdays are both just easy 30-60 minute jogs. Piece of cake. Except that the knee, or TK, as it will henceforth be known, made it’s presence felt loud and clear. As soon as I took my first jogging step, I felt pain in the joint, directly behind TK.
Now this is how you know you’ve been injured too long: I was thrilled to feel pain behind TK. Because pain behind the joint is NOT pain on the outside of the leg. At this point, I think I could shatter my entire kneecap and some part of me would still be gleefully cheering that it wasn’t my IT Band. Only a chronically injured runner could possibly see this thinking as rational.
In any event, I completed my run of about 4 miles. It was slower than usual, but TK eventually shut up enough for me to notice things like new “contract pending” signs on houses in the neighborhood. TK was “good” sore and the economy is starting to rebound? That’s a pretty good run overall.
Running Fiesta 